Here's the thing about social media -- it's all just electronic pen pals. Have you ever thought of pen pals as a promising advertising medium? As a marketing opportunity?

Social media might be nice for a handful of "prom king" brands. But for the average floor wax or motor oil? For an insurance company or peanut butter? For cheese or socks? For TVs or toasters? Bagels or toothpaste? You gonna write your pen pals about that?

I'm a member of several online social communities and here's what we're about: we waste as much time as is legally permissible talking about the stupid shit we're doing. We're having conversations about sex, and booze, and sports, and politics, and, parties, and dinners, and music and did I mention sex?, and just about everything else you can imagine that's irresponsible and silly. However, the one thing I have absolutely never experienced in an online social environment is the one thing the social media marketing maniacs think we're doing -- having conversations about brands.

When it comes to product "conversations" the web is quickly becoming a cruel joke. It's being spammed by interested parties, jammed by morons, and laughed at by people who really know their stuff.

Does anyone with an ounce of knowledge about food take "peer-to-peer" restaurant reviews on the web seriously? Or hotel recommendations? Or car recommendations?

The trustworthy, knowledgeable online recommendations come from the proson their sites, not the pathetic wankers on Twitter or Facebook or CitySearch.

If you want a peer recommendation, and you have a brain in your head, you'll go ask a real fucking person -- you remember them, right? -- not some fictitiously-named nitwitters.

Of course, from time to time there is a big social media success that everyone makes a fuss over and uses as an example. And for every big success there are ten thousand little failures you never hear about.

For most companies, social media is the biggest online non-starter since podcasting.

Attention Web Maniacs...I have noticed an epidemic of low reading comprehension lately. Before you send me hysterical comments about how I hate the web, or I don't understand social media, let me just say this slowly... this post is not about the popularity of social media. It is about the wisdom of spending large sums of money to use it as an advertising/marketing medium. Everyone got that? Okay, now you can send me hysterical comments.

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Ad Contrarian Says:

"Creative people make the ads. Everyone else makes the arrangements."

"Delusional thinking isn't just acceptable in marketing today -- it's mandatory.""Good ads appeal to us as consumers. Great ads appeal to us as humans."

"Social Media: Tens of millions of disagreeable people looking to make trouble."

"As an ad medium, the web is a much better yellow pages and a much worse television."

"Sometimes success in the advertising business is about sitting quietly and letting clients proceed with their hysterical delusions."

"Marketers prefer precise answers that are wrong to imprecise answers that are right."

"Brand studies last for months, cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and generally have less impact on business than cleaning the drapes."

"The idea that the same consumer who was frantically clicking her TV remote to escape from advertising was going to merrily click her mouse to interact with it is going to go down as one of the great advertising delusions of all time."

"Nobody really knows what "creativity" is. Every year thousands of people take a pilgrimage to find out. This involves flying to Cannes, snorting cocaine, and having sex with smokers."

"Marketers habitually overestimate the attraction of new things and underestimate the power of traditional consumer behavior."

"We don’t get them to try our product by convincing them to love our brand. We get them to love our brand by convincing them to try our product."

"In American business, there is nothing stupider than the previous generation of management."

"If the message is right, who cares what screen people see it on? If the message is wrong, what difference does it make?"

"The only form of product information on the planet less trustworthy than advertising is the shrill ravings of web maniacs."

"There's no bigger sucker than a gullible marketer convinced he's missing a trend."

"All ad campaigns are branding campaigns. Whether you intend it to be a branding campaign is irrelevant. It will create an impression of your brand regardless of your intent."

"Nobody ever got famous predicting that things would stay pretty much the same."